Liquid City [Paperback]

Iain Sinclair (Author), Marc Atkins (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 1861890370 | ISBN-13: 978-1861890375 | Publication Date: October 15, 1999

The eccentric, manic, often moving collaborative explorations of London's hidden streets, cemeteries, parks and canals by photographer Marc Atkins and writer Iain Sinclair were first recorded in Sinclair's highly acclaimed 1997 book Lights Out for the Territory, praised in the Guardian as "one of the most remarkable books ever written on London". Liquid City documents Atkins and Sinclair's further peregrinations, focusing on the city's eastern and south-eastern quadrants. An array of famous and lesser-known writers, booksellers and film-makers slip in and out of Sinclair's annotations, as do memories and remnants of the East End's criminal mobs. The title Liquid City is meant to evoke the Thames, which flows silently through the photographic and textual narrative, and to suggest the changes London has undergone and, like all cities, is constantly undergoing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In their previous collaboration Lights Out for the Territory, Marc Atkins's few dark, brooding photographs focused writer Iain Sinclair's dense, impressionistic formulations about London, the city he loves to drift through. Here Atkins's penetrating black-and-white portraits and his beautiful, troubling shots of a London we forget we know dominate. Sinclair contributes essays in a lighter, more journalistic prose than readers of his wonderful, overwrought novels might expect. In them he discusses Atkins, or one of his photographs, and their mutual project of attempting to pin down London's story. And he writes about other writers (Peter Ackroyd, Michael Moorcock, John Healy) who share his fascination with one of the world's great cities. As the title of their book suggests, it is nearly impossible to articulate absolute truths about a space as dynamic as this city, and equally difficult to hold a fixed position on it. Despite that (Sinclair praises his friend for creating flux whereas his writing tries to "mould wriggling chaos"), the pair's project is worthwhile, as it has produced words and some remarkable pictures that only such a troubled engagement could create. This is a visual feast of contemporary photojournalism, in which Atkins's visions and Sinclair's words help the reader perceive a London that can easily be walked past daily without a second glance. --Mark Thwaite, Amazon.co.uk

From Library Journal

Freelance photographer Atkins and Sinclair, author of Downriver and Radon Daughters, portray, through words and photographs, a London few visitors would ever want to see. This is a dark, downtrodden, dirty, and damp London of canals, riverside factories, cemetery monuments, and people who match the scenery. The textAshort essays, poems, and conversationsAis less about the places photographed than about the various people Atkins and Sinclair met on their rambles on the fringes of the city. The photographs, all black-and-white, are only occasionally interesting and provocative, and the fragmented narrative wanders. For comprehensive photography collections only.ALinda M. Kaufmann, Massachusetts Coll. of Liberal Arts Lib., North Adams
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Reaktion Books (October 15, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1861890370
• ISBN-13: 978-1861890375
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,640,146 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The London only a Londoner can know, June 1, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Liquid City (Paperback)

This book told me more about London and Londoners than a million travel books or books about the legends and myths of London. Sinclair and Atkins are interested in the scenery and people that nobody ever notices. The spaces between highways, for instance, and what kind of people live in them. I read his book on Ballard's Crash and it seemed to me then that while Ballard is noticing the abstract geometry, the beautiful curve of the elevated highway, Sinclair is more interested in who lives under that curve. If you think you know London, think again. You'll know it a lot better after you've read this book. I did and it's a city I've lived in. A book which will become, I suspect, a cult classic.

0 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The lack of gratitude in me is staggering, September 5, 2004

By 

Gooch McCracken (c/o your haunted slab of Velveeta) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Liquid City (Paperback)

IAIN SINCLAIR ON JOHN HEALY'S CRITICS: "The thing that really disturbed them was this: if the man was alive and well, chipper as a cricket, cranking out novel after novel, then the emotion they had invested in the lowlife was misplaced. An early death, coughing his guts up, was the least they could expect. The lack of gratitude in this creature was staggering. The reviews had been written under false pretences. The raves were disguised obituary notices."

Uh-huh. Well at least Wilfred Owen had the good manners to get himself croaked by Krauts. And thank God that Sylvia Plath clinched her lit cred by offing herself. But then there's Iain Sinclair. Who cranks out the sort of cartoon-paranoia fiction that's otherwise associated with Don DeLillo & Thomas Pynchon. And it's just a darn shame. Cause some of us are just plain noided out (as it were). Fortunately, LIQUID CITY is a temporary respite from Sinclair's usual subject-matter.